BOOKS BY AGES:

Search

Archive

Charlie and Lola series

Losing a tooth is one of the highlights in a child’s life and it can be both exciting and scary. In classic Charlie and Lola style, the author captures these mixed emotions as Lola has a wobbly tooth which is about to fall out – but not if Lola can help it. Until her best friend Lotta comes to play and tells her the tooth fairy came to give her a coin for her tooth. Lola is thrilled at the idea of this, especially when Lotta tells her she brought a little farm animal with her money. “My wobbly tooth must absolutely completely come out! Now!” she cries. Of course there’s a small problem when Lola loses her tooth after all the fuss of hiding it under her pillow but all ends well. Lauren Child is a pop-star author who has written such classics as the Clarice Bean series and Ruby Redford detective series. She shot to fame and considerable fortune in 2000 when she launched her signature Charlie and Lola series about a brother and sister which all begin the same way:

“I have this little sister Lola.

She is small and very funny.”

My children know those lines off by heart and the endearing way Lola mixes up words and grammar has become family lexicon. “We honestly can look after your dog” and “I’m really ever so not well,’ with the favourite: I will not ever NEVER eat a tomato.” Besides being impossibly cute and beautifully illustrated what makes the Charlie and Lola books so successful is the way Child finds all those little quirks of childhood and makes stories about them in a way that children and adults instantly warm to.

Charlie and Lola have been made into a BBC TV series, DVD’s, stationery and clothing and Child’s combined books have sold over 3 million copies and been translated into 30 languages.